The conventional timer-based registration technique in the latest CDMA standard (C.S0001-C, C.S0002-C, C.S0003-C, C.S0004-C, and C.S0005-C, all available on the 3GPP2 website, http://www.3gpp2.org) was designed with voice calls in mind. The current method uses a timer that guarantees that there is a minimum time between registrations (configured by the operator). Guaranteeing a minimum time between registrations allows the infrastructure to automatically deregister a mobile station if it detects that the mobile station has not sent a registration. When the timer expires the mobile registers. The current technique also includes a randomization scheme. According to the randomization scheme, after a call the mobile applies a random offset to the timer. When the random offset is applied, the time before the next registration is reduced by a random amount. If a large number of users end their phone calls at the same time, the randomization scheme causes the timer-based registrations of the users to be randomized when they would otherwise all happen at the same time.
When this technique is used by a data device that makes a large number of data calls, this may result in wasted battery life. For example, if higher layer applications are causing data calls to happen frequently enough, timer-based registrations may not be needed at all; with the conventional method random timer-based registrations are generated, which may waste both battery life in the mobile and capacity of the cellular network.